1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a telescopically adjustable device for defining or measuring a dimensional space and more specifically a telescopic measurement device that is lightweight and can emulate the dimensions of objects for purposes of testing dimensions in a given space.
2. Description of the Prior Art
When moving furniture or other objects, either for moving, rearranging, or refurnishing, it is important to know the feasibility of getting a piece of furniture safely from one location to another. If a piece of furniture is slightly too big for a hallway, doorway, stairway, elevator, or the like, the piece of furniture may never reach the intended destination, and may, in the process, incur significant damage. In the event that this situation occurs with a new piece of furniture, the damage realized during the unsuccessful move may result in the inability to return the damaged item, or at least incur additional costs. Further, the time and effort that would go into a moving attempt of this type may be substantial.
The moving of a piece of furniture to a space is not the only process involving strict sizing limitations. The process of getting the piece of furniture to the intended location can be difficult, particularly for oversized items. Some pieces may not fit into the back of a van or truck as initially expected by the mover, and therefore may be transported inappropriately, incurring damage to the piece, the vehicle, and/or creating a traffic safety hazard. In the event that the mover makes the safer, more expensive, and more time consuming effort to rent a truck for the moving occasion, knowing the volume of the piece of furniture in advance of renting the truck may save time and money for the mover, as rental trucks are often priced based on the truck size required. A mover would therefore want to rent the smallest truck available to accommodate the item. However, if the mover did not measure, or did not measure correctly, they could again end up with a vehicle that is too small for the item, and have to exchange and upgrade the rental.
Reasons other than physically maneuvering an item into a vehicle or a space may make the move of an item unsuccessful. For example, many furniture warehouses and other furniture stores have relatively high ceilings, thereby dwarfing the furniture, and visually scaling it to seem smaller than it would in a room with an average ceiling height. A purchaser of an item in such a high-ceilinged warehouse may be surprised by the actual appearance of the object in the context of their home or office (as compared with their imagined outcome), and may wish to return the item, again adding greater potential for damage to the item, and wasting time and money in the process.
The primary preparation technique employed by movers in the past and present, is to simply measure the item along all three axes, with a measuring tape or the like, then measure the interior dimensions of the areas en route from the item's origin to its intended location to estimate whether safe and successful navigation of the item is possible. The difficulty with this technique is that it does not fully visualize the item in three dimensions, and the measurements of the areas may be skewed or otherwise impractical for proper dimensional envisionment and planning of item movement. For example, if a large item is to be moved into a room through a doorway on the side of a narrow hallway, the object must be turned in order to enter the room. Although the object may fit in the hallway, and may fit in the doorway, the configuration of the doorway in relation to the hallway may prevent the object from successfully being moved into the room.
To date, no such advancements have been made, particularly from the standpoint of moving an object. U.S. Pat. No. 6,447,080 B1 discloses a set of furniture with a flexible footprint to accommodate a variety of floor plans based on the area of the room's floor. Each component of the furniture set is itself non-adjustable; however, they are generally small enough to provide little difficulty in transporting and maneuvering into position. The two components of the furniture are adjustably connected so that an adjustable length of one unit is underneath and supports the second unit as a foot at one end. This arrangement, although technically adjustable, requires significant effort to make an adjustment including the steps of unscrewing the attachment screws from a bottom surface of the top unit, moving the bottom unit into the new desired position, and then reattaching the units with the screws.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,324,750 B1 teaches an architectural system for adjustably recreating a vehicle interior and a method of constructing a vehicle architecture. The system consists of a prismatic frame, where 5 of the 6 sides are telescopically expanded and the sixth side is located on the downward facing side to be resting on the floor and is comprised of floor plates having support areas for the vertically telescoping sides, thereby dictating the amount that the edges of the top facing side can be expanded. The vertically telescopic edges are held in a predetermined fixed position as defined by aligning apertures of the telescoping portions and threading a pin through the apertures. As a result of this system, all of the telescopic edges, vertical and/or horizontal are adjustable to a very limited number of dimensional possibilities, and are telescopically formed primarily for the purpose of compact storage, at the cost of quick assembly.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,915,810 teaches a telescoping measuring stick with air damped closure and frictional locking. The measuring stick is combined with liquid levels to arrange the telescoping measuring stick to provide accurate vertical or horizontal measurement. Cameron teaches a method for adjustably locking the measure into place at any position through which the telescoping member passes, and a readable measurement located on the telescoping portion. This measurement device is not capable of measuring in more than one direction at a time, and further, the leveling system provided can assure a perpendicular relationship between only two of the three planes (e.g., measuring a vertical distance, the measurement is level from right to left, but there is no indication that the level is not leaning forward or backward.
Therefore, a device providing the capability of defining or measuring a three-dimensional volume of an arbitrary size, that measures and extends in three-perpendicular directions simultaneously, and is easily transported in collapsed or disassembled form has not been available in the prior art.